Wednesday, January 25, 2017

This is a particularly good set of tips for guitar building and woodworking. Includes ways to clean the fingerboard, using duct tape to remove splinters, clamping weird angles and curved things, gluing on laminate, taping, and making your own fret-removal pliers out of cheap wire cutters.

Monday, January 16, 2017

Mounting your neck, I have come
up with a simple way to mount the neck, you will need,

1.A reversible drill,

2.A set of drill bits in 64ths from
1/16th-1/4"(you will be able to assemble your instrument with this set.)

3.A quick grip clamp with the soft rubber pads.
(optional)

4.A digital caliper (optional)

To start, fit
your neck to the body, with the body lying flat on a table, or other flat
surface, support the neck so it lays flat in the neck pocket, with a yard
stick, check the alignment of the neck to the bridge, hold your yard stick
along the edge of the neck, from the nut down past the bridge, if your bridge
mounting screw holes are drilled, you want the yard stick to be equal distance
from the edge of the outside two holes. Note the gap in the neck pocket at the
upper end, place a shim of the appropriate thickness at that point.

Now you will pick
the guitar up, stand it on the butt of the body, with the neck pointing
straight up, place the quick grip in the cutout, holding the neck tight in the
pocket, with the handle on the top side of the guitar; check to see if it is
aligned with the shim in place, and also that the heel is tight to the
body.Now find a drill bit that just
fits the holes in the body, this will be used to drill a center dimple for the
mounting hole in the neck, put the drill bit in the reversible drill, make sure
it is tight, now, MAKE SURE THE DRILL IS IN REVERSE, insert the drill bit in
the holes, one at a time and just hit the trigger lightly, going backwards,
this will just drill a small dimple in the center of the mounting holes. When
you’re done with all four, remove the drill bit.

Now you will need
the right size drill bit to drill the mounting holes. In rock maple the
drill bit should be no smaller than the shank of the screw. With a digital
caliper, measure between the threads on your screw, your drill bit should be no
smaller then that measurement, but rather, the same size. On softer woods, you
can go smaller, but not the hard Maple.

Put the
appropriate size drill bit in the drill, at this time. Put one of the screws
along the cutout to see how far into the neck it will go, look to see that it
won't go too far, then place the screw alongside the drill bit in the drill,
adjust the exposed length of the drill bit so it only sticks out the length of
the screw. Tighten the chuck on the drill, and double check that the length is
still right. Go through the mounting hole in the body, keeping the drill bit
centered in the hole. Drill your mounting holes. You’re now ready to mount your
neck. I also use this method to center the holes for the tuners as well.

The Truss Rod - single action =
single rod. What I do is snug up the rod, don't over tighten. Tighten just
enough to where the rod doesn't rattle. With light gauge strings and low
action, these heavier 50's style necks shouldn'tneed much more attention for some time.
Before I do a string change, I'll check the relief to see if it needs to be
adjusted; if it needs to be, I will snug it up a little when the strings are
off. Always adjust the truss rod with
the strings off, or way loose. If you do a lot of guitar repairs, you will
notice that the guitars that are easy to adjust with the strings on (Gibson –
Gretch - Fender bullets), have a lot more problems with broken or stripped
adjustment nuts. When the torque to twist the nut becomes greater than to twist
the rod, the rod will twist. That's when the trouble starts. If the brass nut
doesn't strip, the rod will twist until it snaps; usually at the anchor (Gretch
guitars are famous for this). It takes a little bit more time to adjust, tune,
de-tune, adjust, tune, check, but done right, you shouldn't need to readjust
for quite some time.

When the truss rod slot is machined from the back, the skunk stripe
fills in behind it. When you drop the truss rod in from the top then
cover it you have no need for it. If you are setup for the one piece
neck and want to put a cap on the top you can still come from the back
to install the rod. The benefits of the rod from the back is you can
have more bow in the rod verses from the top. The cap is 1/4" or less
usually and that lowers the available thickness to work with. This I
believe is why fender went to the veneered cap in the sixties. The rod
from the back is the easiest and fastest way to install the rod. What I
like about it is it seems to need less maintenance then the shallower
rod, like the Gibson's. The Gibson rod adjust easier, but uses more
tension and is always under tension as compared to the deeper rod and
seems to move more in different climates. A friend of mine who works in a
large music store in Reno once told me the majority of his setups were
from traveling musicians going from one gig to the next. The thinner
the neck, the shallower the truss rod bow.The way I'm truing the
fretboard these days is to first machine the fret board radius, I do
this so I don't have to remove a lot more later, then cut the back
profile. I then put a slight load on the rod and sand it true using a
edge sander setup horizontally, similar to a stroke sander but not a
stroke sander. This way I true the F/B to the way the truss rod acts
with the neck. After it is trued, I remove it from the fixture, it will
have a slight back bow. When I drop the tension back off the rod, I will
have between .003-.006" positive bow. I've had "O" issues with back
bow after changing to this arrangement.

The finish
- these necks come
standard with two coats of nitrocellulose lacquer, this will hold up
well with moderate usage, You can apply more, just sand lightly with
320 grit dry. If your going to use
anything other then nitrocellulose lacquer, the original finish should
be competently removed. What you don't want to do is wet sand between
coats, raw wood will suck it up like a sponge, swelling, cracking ,
twisting, and all kinds of ugly stuff. I dry sand right up to were I get
ready to buff. I use paint thinner (mineral spirits), on the hard
finishes; lacquers
- urethane's - and such. Be careful, even mineral spirits will swell up
the raw
wood. Not nearly as badly as water, but it will swell. Be most careful
around end grain; the very back of the neck, front of the peg head, and
especially the tuner holes. Why you ask, because the tuner holes are almost
all end grain, hard to get enough finish applied to seal it from moisture; any
kind of moisture. I tape this area off, and dry sand it after everything else
is done. I have a lot less problems that way.

DC Kunkle has advise for attaching guitar necks. This is specifically the instructions for his baritone neck:

Long
scale conversion neck for the Tele style body with no modification
necessary for intonation, I start with the 25.5" scale and moved it out
two more frets to achieve the 28.629" scale. There's a 10-15 business
day build/handling time on these. I try to keep it to 10 but when it
gets real busy, it can sometimes take a little longer.

·1/8th “ flat bottom nut slot, (nut not included) if you would like a nut, see extras

·23 frets

Comes with no mounting holes (see extras)

11
.110" wide, .053" tall frets installed, I spray two coats of
lacquer
on the fret board. If you plan to add more lacquer I will sand with 320
dry then buff slightly with fine scotch
guard then install the frets. This makes it easy to add more lacquer if
you choose to do so. Let me know at time of purchase if you would like
me to do that. When I do add more lacquer after the frets are
installed, I take and cut masking tape into thin strips by laying it on a
peace of glass and using a straight edge and utility knife blade. ( I
usually use 12" to 16" strips) You can tailor the width of the strips to
best cover the tops of the frets but letting the lacquer bridge the
fret board and bottom edge of the frets. - no fret
work. (see extras)

·7/32" black position marker dots

·3/32" black side dots

·standard back cut is vintage U, similar to a 54 T/S
round back or a 59 L/P round back, .875" at the first fret, .975" at
the twelfth fret.

EXTRAS If you choose to have any extras done you can commit to buy but don't
pay, send a message with which extras you would like and I will send an
invoice
for the correct amount.

Fret work. I can do a fret mill (level) crown and polish the frets for you as an option
for an extra $25, if you do not have the experience to do this yourself,
this option comes highly recommended.

Bone nut. For an extra $25. I can rough in a bone nut cut in with
nut files and left a little high (factory) left loose so you or your
tech can tailor it to your own taste. To secure when your ready just put
a dab of wood glue on the outside bottom two edges, install on neck
and tighten the strings, the outside two strings is all you need to
tighten, let sit for a hour or so and your good to go. You can put all
the glue you want to glue this on, but the more you put on the harder it
is to replace later on.

Drill mounting holes. For an extra $5. I can drill those for you.

The neck comes with two coats of nitrocellulose lacquer, not meant to
be perfect, but it's a good hard finish that will let you put your
project together with out the hassle of doing finish work yourself.